Afterward, we head to the famous House of Nanking for dinner. As we wait for our sesame chicken and broccoli with black bean sauce, I pull out my phone and search for updates on Careless People. TechCrunch reports that Meta secured an emergency arbitration ruling to halt the author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, from promoting her book, citing violations of a non-disparagement agreement. Despite this, the book is currently the third most-purchased title on Amazon.

When we leave the restaurant, we see something straight out of a sci-fi movie: a sleek white car with a rotating black antenna pulls up to the curb. The driver’s seat is empty. A man gets into the rear seat and the car glides away silently, navigating the downtown San Francisco streets on its own.

“That’s a Waymo—the driverless taxi service,” my husband says.

Almost on cue, our phones, probably because they have overheard our conversation, start buzzing with news alerts about Waymo. San Francisco, it seems, is teeming with self-driving cars, they will soon get permission to drive to the airport as well. The future is here, and it’s both spooky and scintillating.

That night, I finally dive into Careless People on my Kindle. From the very first page, I’m hooked - right from the opening dedication which sets the tone: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” These lines, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, feel eerily appropriate for Facebook—or rather, Meta. With Tom and Daisy being represented by Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

I am drawn to the protagonist, Sarah Wynn-Williams. She joined Facebook in 2011 and worked as Director of Public Policy for the next six years. Her voice is refreshingly candid, often self-deprecating in a Bridget Jones-esque way. Sarah is an outsider—a New Zealander who began her career at the UN and hasn’t been indoctrinated by Silicon Valley’s cult-like culture. On a trip on Mark Zuckerberg’s private jet, she calls out staffers who pretend to let Mark Zuckerberg win at the board game Settlers of Catan; later she refers to Zuckerberg as Citizen Kane. But as her story unfolds, her tone shifts from wry humor to frustration and agitation. She’s hemmed in by corporate hypocrisy, double-dealing, and the golden handcuffs of Facebook equity and her need for health insurance.

Then there are the Sheryl Sandberg anecdotes—stories of Sandberg misusing her office for book promotions, mistreating staff, and embodying the very double standards she publicly denounced. These revelations are disheartening. I’ve long been a fan of Sandberg. When Lean In was released in 2013, I read it in one sitting. It spoke to me on a deeply personal level. But over the years, whispers of Sandberg’s duplicity and double standards have grown louder, and Careless People lays it all bare.

The book is riveting and disturbing. Sarah recounts conversations and coverups in many public instances of Facebook’s unethical behaviour - from the days of internet.org right upto Facebook’s refusal to curb fake news and hate speech, its manipulation of the US elections and its role in inciting race riots in Burma. What’s shocking is the deliberate deceit - as the company prepares evasive statements and shifty subterfuges to deal with questions from senators, governments, and the media. Also shocking is the ruthless use of personal data for advertising - in one instance teenage girls who delete their selfies are immediately shown beauty ads. Reading into the early hours of the morning, I highlight and highlight and am shaken by the enormity of it all.

That weekend, friends pick us up in their Tesla for dinner. “Look, look—the car’s in self-driving mode!” our friend exclaims. She takes both hands off the steering wheel and raises them in the air, as the car moves to the left lane at 80 miles per hour, the steering wheel tilting to the left. Soon after it shifts to the right, moving towards the ramp to exit at Mountain View. As we hurtle down the highway with no human hands at the wheel, I can’t help but see it as a powerful metaphor for our current relationship with technology—we’re eagerly relinquishing control to forces we don’t fully understand, trusting algorithms with our lives in ways both literal and figurative.

Along the way, we pass yet another self-driving car—this one a Nuro—roaming the streets. Over dinner, the conversation turns to self-driving cars, Elon Musk, skyrocketing property prices, and the growing homelessness crisis in downtown San Francisco.

“Have you read Careless People,” I say.

“Oh, you mean the Facebook book where the author claims Sheryl Sandberg asked her to sleep in her bed on her private jet? Is it worth reading?” someone asks.

“I believe the writer,” I reply. “Sarah Wynn-Williams is a whistleblower, someone who deserves to be heard. Her book is a rare outsider’s perspective. It matters because it forces us to face the direction our world is taking, and to look long and hard at the ethics of the world we are co-creating. This is a book that demands to be read, to spark conversations we should be having, to look for solutions we should be searching for. Read Careless People if you care.”

To read more on Facebook, read An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel published in 2021. Also read the stunning story of Amazon in The Everything War by Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli published in 2024. And for more on AI, on ChatGPTand the race that will change the world, read Supremacy by Parmy Olson published in 2024.

Could you recommend any other must-read books set in the tech world - do write in with suggestions. And until next week, happy reading.

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal